January 20, 1999

THE INDEPENDENT COUNSEL

Figure in a Starr Inquiry Pleads Not Guilty; Wants Trial Moved to Capital

---

Related Articles

The Overview: Emphatic 'Not Guilty' Opens the Case for the Defense

Issue in Depth: Clinton Impeachment Trial

Forum

Join a Discussion on The Impeachment Trial

---

By NEIL A. LEWIS

LEXANDRIA, Va. -- As President Clinton's lawyers opened his defense before the Senate on Tuesday, a peripheral figure in the impeachment drama pleaded not guilty in federal court here to charges she interfered with the independent counsel's investigation of President Clinton.

"Absolutely not guilty," declared Julie Hiatt Steele, whose lawyer charged that Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr had brought the case in Virginia solely to avoid a decision in the District of Columbia, where a similar case brought by his office was thrown out last summer.

Starr's office charged Ms. Steele earlier this month with three counts of obstructing justice and one count of making false statements when she cast doubt on accusations that Clinton once groped a friend of hers, Kathleen Willey.

Ms. Steele's lawyer, Nancy Luque, told Judge Claude Hilton that the case really belonged in the District of Columbia and that she would wage a legal battle to have it moved there.

In charging that Starr brought the indictment in Virginia in order to avoid the federal court in the District, Ms. Luque was apparently referring to the tax fraud case against Webster Hubbell, a longtime Arkansas friend of Clinton and his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Judge James Robertson threw out that case last July, declaring in a stern ruling that the Hubbell tax investigation had far exceeded Starr's mandate and amounted to a fishing expedition. Starr is appealing that decision.

David Barger, a prosecutor from the Office of Independent Counsel, did not respond in court to Ms. Luque's charge and declined to comment after the hearing.

The case against Ms. Steele involves an affidavit and statements she made about her knowledge of whether Clinton made an unwanted sexual advance to Ms. Willey in the Oval Office in 1993. Ms. Willey, who was a White House volunteer at the time, has claimed that Clinton grabbed her intimately when they were alone briefly.

Ms. Steele initially told a reporter for Newsweek magazine that Ms. Willey told her of the incident just after she said it occurred. But Ms. Steele then recanted that account and gave an affidavit in the Paula Jones sexual misconduct lawsuit denying that Ms. Willey had ever told her of the incident. Ms. Steele said later that she had claimed knowledge of the incident only as a favor to Ms. Willey, who had asked her to lie to confirm the account she had given to the reporter.

Clinton denied that he had ever made a sexual advance to Ms. Willey, both in his grand jury testimony and in his deposition in the Jones case, and described her as a discredited person.

Although Ms. Steele is a peripheral figure to the investigation of the president, her refusal to back up Ms. Willey's story was apparently a major factor in Starr's decision not to include information about Ms. Willey in his impeachment report to the House. Moreover, Starr is continuing to investigate whether people friendly to Clinton sought to influence Ms. Willey to change her story to be more favorable to the president.

To Starr's critics, his prosecution of Ms. Steele demonstrates his lack of proportion and how far he will go to attack anyone who gets in his way. One of the counts of obstructing justice includes an appearance that Ms. Steele made on the CNN television talk show "Larry King Live," where she again disputed Ms. Willey's account.

In addition to having Ms. Steele testify before the grand jury on two occasions, the independent counsel also had the grand jury take testimony from her daughter and brother. Ms. Steele, a 52-year-old single mother from Richmond, has said Starr's investigators raised pointed questions about the legality of her adoption of an East European child in an effort to intimidate her. Starr has denied that any such activity took place.

Ms. Luque has charged that the timing of the case was designed to coincide with the impeachment trial. Charles Bakaly, a spokesman for Starr, dismissed those claims, saying the indictment was brought as soon as it was ready. Hilton set a trial date of March 30.